I remember when Giltedge came out, many were in an unroar over the fact that the piece, supposed to be florentine, was not necessarily so. Mine was, and so I did not pay too much attention to the griping at the time.
There are 3-5 variations of the piece:
Florentine (white spots on a gold base)
Gold lace (the truck was an optional purchase, if I recall.)
Gold spots on a white base.
And more from Blab:
According to Nancy Young's book, there were 5 variations of this model--gold with white dapples, gold with yellow dapples (due to a problem with the dappling grease), gold leopard appy (aka white with gold spots), gold lace, and gold plated (almost solid gold with a few white spots).
There were leftovers and those were painted over in solid black. They were used as a SR named Excalibur at BreyerFest 1997.
They also had a sort of recall on them, when a lot of folks got ones that were real greasy and the white had turned very yellow. Excaliber was painted white and then painted black to cover the gold paint over the white body. So some of those have a really neat chalky appearence with a lot of steel gray hightlights. Some are just a thick boring black.
